Sous vide hoisin duck breasts
Flushed with the absolute success cooking lamb chops in my homemade sous vide slow cooker conversion kit, I think duck is next.
This time I wanted to add some flavours to the vacuum sealed pouches and as hoisin works so well with duck, I thought I would try that. I also added a teaspoon of Chinkiang black vice vinegar as I love its subtle flavour and in may tenderise the duck a little too. It is likely that most of the vinegar is likely to be sucked out of the pouch during the vacuum process, so to this end I used enough plastic to make a pouch that would hang over the edge of the countertop whilst sealing, hopefully to lessen the effect.
This was a superb meal. The duck breast was so tender you could have pushed your finger through it. It had the flavour and mouthfeel of a rare duck breast, without all that blood. Marvellous!
Ingredients
Ingredients
Printable 🖨 shopping 🛒 list & 👩🍳 method for this recipe
- 2 x 160g duck breasts, skin on
- 2 teaspoons hoisin sauce
- 2 teaspoons Chinkiang black rice vinegar
to serve
- 1 packet prepared stir fry mix. Yes, I know it's cheating, but it is a weekday!
- 2 nests of egg noodles
- toasted sesame seeds
- sesame oil
Mise en place
- If you are luck enough to have a Jaccard meat tenderiser, stamp the breast all over on the skin side to puncture the skin and provide a path for the flavours to penetrate the meat.
- Make up 2 vacuum pouches that will be large enough to hand over the countertop while the breasts are being sealed.
Method
- Place a teaspoon of hoisin sauce and a teaspoon of Chinkiang black rice vinegar in each pouch
- Pop a duck breast in each pouch and wipe the inside of the pouch where it will be sealed with a paper towel.
- Hang the pouch over the edge of the countertop and vacuum seal.
- Set your sous vide bath to 56.5°C
- Suspend the pouches in the bath and heat for 2 hours
- When the duck breasts have cooked, get a heavy based frying pan very hot with no oil and sear the duck breasts, skin side down for 2 minutes
- If you have a mapp blowtorch you can sear the meat side of the breast while the skin is being crisped. I wouldn't bother with a propane blowtorch unless you like the taste of propane fuel.
- Meanwhile cook your stir-fry mix in a hot wok with a little oil and pop the noodle nests in boiling water for 4 minutes.
- Drain and toss in sesame oil and a teaspoon of toasted sesame seeds.
- Slice the duck breasts diagonally into bite-size pieces and serve.